New Jersey Lawmaker Makes First Court Appearance on Fraud Charges

By RICHARD G. JONES

Published: April 4, 2007

His hands tightly clenched, State Senator Wayne R. Bryant strode briskly down East State Street here Tuesday morning, following a path well worn by scores of other elected officials in New Jersey in recent years.

A clutch of reporters circled Mr. Bryant.

Without breaking stride, he uttered a barely audible ''No comment.'' Within moments, an impassive Mr. Bryant was through the door of the Clarkson S. Fisher Federal Courthouse for perhaps the toughest appointment of his 25-year political career -- an initial court appearance to answer an indictment on fraud charges.

Making his first public appearance since being indicted last week, Mr. Bryant said little during a 15-minute hearing before United States Magistrate Judge John J. Hughes to formalize the beginning of the federal case.

Even as Mr. Bryant was leaving the courtroom, a group of longtime friends and colleagues announced that they were planning a public show of support. A group called the Friends of Wayne Bryant said it would hold a dinner in Cherry Hill, N.J., this month to celebrate his years in politics.

An organizer said that the group was moved to hold the ceremony because of what it felt was unfair treatment of Mr. Bryant by the United States attorney, Christopher J. Christie.

''Instead of letting the indictment stand on its own, he turned it into a political circus,'' said Fred Williams of the New Jersey Black Issues Convention, a 25-year-old coalition of about two dozen groups, including the New Jersey branch of the N.A.A.C.P. and several groups made up predominantly of African-American professionals.

Mr. Christie has repeatedly denied any ulterior motives in his prosecutions.

''As to politicizing a case, that's nonsense,'' said a spokesman for Mr. Christie, Michael Drewniak. ''Our record in public corruption prosecutions speaks for itself.''

A former chairman of the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee, Mr. Bryant, 59, is one of the highest-ranking African-Americans to serve in the New Jersey Legislature. ''I've known Wayne Bryant for 25 years,'' Mr. Williams said. ''I look at the whole man, and then I look at what politics has been about for the past 25 years.''

Mr. Bryant, a Democrat from Camden County, was indicted last week on charges that he held three jobs in which federal prosecutors said that he did ''little or no work'' to improperly inflate the value of his pension.

By working the three jobs, at the Gloucester County Social Services Board, the School of Law at Rutgers University-Camden and the School of Osteopathic Medicine at the University of Medicine and Dentistry, Mr. Bryant was able to raise his annual pension from about $28,000 to about $81,000, the indictment said.

At the same time, the indictment said, Mr. Bryant did little to earn the more than $600,000 combined over the past decade from those positions. In 2005, the indictment said, Mr. Bryant worked zero hours for the social services board but made nearly $60,000.

At the hearing on Tuesday, Mr. Bryant, who faces up to 150 years in prison if convicted on all of the charges against him, was released on a $250,000 unsecured bond.

Photo: Wayne R. Bryant, a state senator from Camden County, with his lawyer, David Poplar, left, after leaving federal court in Trenton yesterday. (Photo by Laura Pedrick for The New York Times)